The analysis by the Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG) includes detailed calculations from 20 local authorities, and estimates that councils could save “billions”, by changing the way they intervene with the most challenging families.
It reveals that Barnet council was spending an average £100,000 every year on responding to each of its families with complex needs, before starting work on the troubled families programme, while Solihull council was spending up to 18 per cent of its overall budget on just three per cent of its families.
One single-parent family in the South West was estimated to have cost local agencies more than £400,000, including one family member costing the public purse more than £290,000 in a single year.
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